9/16 Today is a play day. A gift to myself for getting here. I’m hoping this will resolve my feelings of apprehension and loneliness. The more I’m around others, the lonelier I tend to feel, because I’ve never quite learned how to fit in and overcome my awkwardness with strangers. That’s not entirely true. I’ve overcome during phases of my life, like when I worked as an accountant. I felt like an imposter sometimes, sitting there in a conference room in a suit, with other suits, looking at the city view, thinking about the IQ in that room, and thinking about how much I don’t care about any of it, and that I’m just a country girl from a little town who picked wildflowers for her mother who called them weeds, and was a child seen but not heard.

My last professional job was the job of a lifetime. I thought I would stay and retire from that company. The work was challenging, the opportunity to advance was right there, I had finally arrived (by the definition I set for myself). I began the job with a decent level of pride and self-esteem. I didn’t know at first that my boss (I’ll call him Walter) had no intention of retiring and mentoring me for his job, as was the plan of the board of directors and as I was told. Instead, Walter undermined and outright sabotaged my work efforts. It took me a year to figure out what was going on. (Walter was both charming and manipulative.) It took me another year to realize I couldn’t fix it, but by then, Walter had continually criticized me for my inability to work the office politics with the seven male associates of the company. (I don’t participate in office politics.) And Harry did nothing to ease me into the game. The worst for me was when Harry began finding fault in my work accuracy. I always took great pride in the quality of my work if nothing else. I was ready to lose my mind. I had to leave.

But I had stayed too long. My spirit was broken. Leaving this job without another job lined up was why I had the time to walk the Camino. I brought the work catastrophe with me, along with my big pack, and along with other grief deeply buried. I expected the weight of a lifetime of small and large unhealed wounds, all of them, could be walked out over 500 miles. A great expectation. Prior to the first step, I was spiraling downward, and being someone who needs grand ambitions to pull me up, I cashed in my 401(k) retirement savings and booked my pilgrimage. I felt as though I wouldn’t be around to retire if I didn’t do something to turn myself around. (My despair can go as deep as my ambitions are grand.) Originally, I was going to wait until age 50 to walk the Camino, but I decided to hit the path at 48-years-old.